Thanks for the great descriptions of what you’re seeing on your dives, by the way.

And I appreciate hearing the stories of living aboard, and dealing with equipment and systems on the boat. (I harbor fantasies about one day living on a boat, so hearing your perspectives helps…)

Best wishes for fair seas,

DiveMasterMark in Florida

We seem to hate on a collective basis. On an individual basis, when we talk and meet people there is usually a quick loss of our fears and distrusts and we see they are real human beings the same as us with much commonality and heart. Blanket statements of another culture’s ills are totally wrong and needs to be ignored. When we judge other people, one must think of how our actions should be judged from their perspective.

The day after the destruction of 9/11, we went to eat lunch at a local restaurant in the port area of Jakarta (the Capital of Indonesia and by far the world’s largest Muslim Country). Two young men from the Laskar Jihad were stopping cars in the road in front of the restaurant and asking for donations to help fund their campaigns in the eastern islands against their perceived persecutions from the Christians (and there had been so many horrible actions by both sides that one could understand their vexation with the situation). Our stacked carload of friends and family (all Indonesians) politely explained to them that to give monies to either side would just escalate the hatred and violence to no ones benefit, whereupon we all went on in to the restaurant.

On the wall of the hot restaurant, a flickering TV was showing the horror of the planes hitting the World Trade Center and everyone’s eyes were glued to this oft repeated show of mass destruction. Soon the two young men of the Laskar Jihad, being hot and bored and curious as to having just met their first American, wandered in and joined our table and ordered ice tea. At first they carried an amount of young men’s arrogance and swagger but when they realized that we would accept them as equals, their attitudes soon dissipated.

They had grown up in a poor Muslim ghetto in Jakarta and probably never went beyond grade school in formal education. In a very poor country one never asks such questions as, “What school or university did you go to?” They had a propaganda flyer of two written pages with them, which they had been giving to prospective donors. Even with very limited knowledge of the Indonesian language it was obvious that whoever wrote their propaganda sheet had a very limited education and it seemed that our two new acquaintances had no knowledge of its meanings.

Whatever their knowledge, at first their views were hard and cold and their eyes continually flicked between the destruction to America shown on the TV and the reality of a real American setting besides them ——- an American who morally seemed to be nothing like their imagined view. Their views had been formed only by the unfiltered porn and other garbage coming down over unfiltered western satellites for their children to view and from a few hate mongers in their own neighborhoods. Within minutes after finding that we carried no hate and that we also wanted to hear their views and fears, one could sense their attitudes of hate and frustration dissolving within them. Within a half hour there were real tears streaming down their faces in sympathy to America in the 9/11 affair and each repeat showing of the Trade Center fires on the TV brought more tears —– not just about 9/11 but on how wrong their perception of what an American is like had been. There had been an amazing transformation within them and in front of the lunch time crowd of well over a hundred people they wrapped caring arms around me.

The mind has revisited this scene a thousand times since and my own arrogances and righteousness has had to be revised in a hundred heart heavy ways. And there is a guilt built within now that does not want to be extinguished until the justification is found for my being a part of letting our own religious and political leaders become such bigots and haters of other peoples and cultures. Is it just their being naive, the same as I in the past? Or are our own leaders intent on only devising plans that sows more hate and despair? Can we Americans learn to see how many times our actions sow sorrows on others and learn to wrap our arms around those harmed, as did the men of the Jihad?

I do not have the answers but there have been so many observations of “when we give the good from the heart ——– good usually returns to us”. And I know one lesson learned in the restaurant in Jakarta, “If there is no conversation between two peoples or countries, there can be no hope.”

And I also know the story a marine guard told me at our American Embassy, about how the Indonesian People had asked them to put out a condolence book so they could write their sympathies to the American People in it. And soon the book had become totally illegible due to the hundreds of individuals having to write their sympathies over others in the full book — and they had come in the hot tropical sun to witness their caring for the American People.

Sadly an accounting of the condolence book or of the hundreds of individual flowers lovingly placed in our Embassy fence by the Indonesian People (mainly Muslims) was never seen in any western news report.

Sorry to linger so long and profess so much, Al